This week is another busy one for your baby. By the end of the week your baby will be 4-6 mm Crown to Rump (CR). The larynx starts to form as does the inner ear. The lining of the placenta begins developing but the placenta will not take over production of the hormones until about week 12.

The heart is bulging from the body and blood circulation is well established. Upper and lower limb buds will appear this week. And the primordia of the liver, pancreas, lungs, and stomach are evident.
Transvaginal ultrasound can pick up 86% of the fetal poles with heart motion, and 100% of the yolk sacs at this point.

The night before last I slept badly…it was like my brain wouldn’t quiet down…I kept dreaming and dreaming. I woke up at about 4am and decided to get up and call Courtney back in the US…it was about 9pm her time. I’ve been trying to get ahold of her but she hadn’t been answering. We talked for a good little bit…of course she was so excited for me. I dozed a little bit after that, but had to get up and straighten up a bit before going to meet the girls at the cafe. After the market I went back to the house for a bit and then rode my bike to get my hair cut. I went to Mercadona in San Pedro afterwards…and then took a long-cut home. I don’t know exactly how, but I ended up at Diego…I think it took me 10 minutes longer to get home that way.

Not long after Tj got home we both climbed into bed. He said he would set an alarm, but then we decided to let the phone wake us up. Gonzo was supposed to call us to say when he would be ready to go pick up the mail. Of course he never called, and we ended up sleeping three hours! We woke up at 7pm…we went back to bed at about 11pm and slept soundly all night! Ah, I love sleep.

A couple of anniversaries we’re celebrating today:
12 years ago today Tj graduated from the academy.
2 years ago he had his first day at work in Spain.

Tj and I think Fran was trying to say that Gonzo’s a crack-up…but we like the original better.

What happened was that Fran, while driving home, saw Gonzo checking out a car for sale. Fran stopped to talk to G, and G was calling the owner of the car. Fran told G that you can’t trust just anyone when it comes to buying used…and that he knew someone who could check out the car for G. By this time G was talking to the owner of the car…a guy named Enrique…Gonzo said ‘His name is Rico, he comes from a good family’. Fran was really laughing when he told Tj all of this. Gonzo is a crack. Say it; it’ll make you smile.

Something that the girls and I were talking about today at the cafe was how everyone has a story about the runaround you get when you try to do anything official here. One of our stories: when we moved here the people we replaced set us up in an apartment whose owner wouldn’t give us a contract…she wanted us to pay her in cash. In order for us to get reimbursed by the Gov’t, though, we had to have a note from the town hall saying we were residents, and we couldn’t get that w/o a contract. I don’t remember how we worked around this…I think we just sent copies of the receipt to the Gov’t and everything was fine. When we finally moved into this house we were glad to get an official contract, and I went to the town hall with Chari and got the residence paper. When Gonzo went to get his residence paper he was told that since he was military the base would provide him with a paper which could be substituted for the contract until they signed on a house…why they never told us is beyond me. Everyone here agrees that you never get the same answer twice concerning official paperwork.

Speaking of Gonzo…something that continues to crack me up is the fact that he always asks Tj and me for advice on where to send his kids to school. We’ve told him a thousand times that we don’t have kids, we’ve only lived here two years, we know nothing about the school system here. He just doesn’t seem to get it…he keeps asking us! He was registering his kids for school yesterday and today, so hopefully the questions will stop. If not I’ll have to resort to making up different schools and telling him I’ve heard that they’re the best for students who need to learn Spanish.

We had lunch at Teresa and Fran’s house Sunday…it was great! Sometimes going to their house is a big lesson in how I should entertain. When we have people over I have to work to come up with more than just a main dish, a side dish and a dessert…Teresa really shows me up.

When we got there she said we’d feed the kids first. Grace and Gonzo were invited too, so all five of their kids ate together. After they were done Teresa started cooking our pasta…she had everything else prepared and waiting to be reheated. A week or so ago Tj had questioned Fran and Teresa about fideua, a pasta dish he’d had on the base once. She started that cooking and we all sat down outside for the first course.

This is something that really threw us for a loop when we first moved to Spain. Almost every restaurant offers the menu del dia for lunch, and every one I’ve seen has three courses. So the first course Teresa had was composed of: a plate of about five or six different cheeses, a basket of crackers and bread, a plate of cooked asparagus, two types of cooked mushrooms, a large green salad, clams and pulpo (my personal favorite from yesterday…it was better than any I’d eaten in restaurants around here). After we’d talked and eaten a while Gonzo asked if that was just the first course…sometimes it really is unbelievable that you’re expected to eat more after an amazing first course! The main dish was the fideua; it had a base of seafood stock, and there were shrimp and fish cooked with the pasta. For dessert Teresa blended lemon ice cream with champagne…and she set out chocolate and fruta del bosque ice cream for the pregnant lady to share.

Here’s where I confess a huge fault of mine. I’ve always had a bad temper, and a sharp tongue. I try to control it, and think I do a pretty good job most times, but sometimes I just let loose, and this was one of those times. It really annoys me that Gonzo always cuts people off, and he was doing it again during lunch. He asked Tj where the train station was. Before Tj could even open his mouth Gonzo started asking is it down that road?…is it before the big curve?…is it on the right or the left?…how long does it take to get there? All of these questions would have been answered if he’d have shut up and let Tj answer, but he just kept running his mouth. Finally I just looked at him and said “Tj was trying to tell you that.” I didn’t yell, I had a little smile on my face, but I was forceful. Then he repeated one of his questions, and I said again “Tj was trying to tell you that.” I think the third time I said it to him he realized what was going on and actually closed his mouth for more than 30 consecutive seconds. Of course after the second time Tj was trying to get me to stop saying that…I know he doesn’t like it when I’m like that. And the truth of the matter is that I don’t like it when I do that. I know I’m being rude, and the fact that Gonzo’s rude doesn’t make it ok for me to do that. I really want to change. I want to be a good role model for my kids, and I need to just learn to let things go. I need to be calmer like Tj.

There are several things about our Rota trip last week that I haven’t written down yet, so I’m just gonna type a quick run-down of the whole week.

Monday we drove out there; had Subway and watched Master and Commander.

Tuesday we started the Security stuff, found out we were going to be parents, rented but didn’t finish watching Timeline (not worth it) and Big Fish (worth it, but we ran out of time). Gonzo called us just after we’d turned off the lights to go to bed…he’d gotten a notice from the Navy Lodge that they were fumigating his room Wednesday. He was calling to tell me that since I was pregnant I shouldn’t be around all that…but they weren’t fumigating Billeting, so it wasn’t a problem. He kept saying that he wasn’t comfortable with being around it himself (which I can understand), and that the base wouldn’t have anywhere else for him to stay (which didn’t make any sense at all). So instead of trying to work something out he just decided that he was going to move off base the next morning…for his last night at Rota.

Wednesday we went to the doctor’s, had Subway for lunch, washed the Toyota, finished watching Big Fish and went out with the Gonzos for supper. Gonzo’d found a hotel (Playa de la Luz, or something like that) and he wanted us to come there for supper. We asked him for directions…we didn’t realize the restaurant was in the hotel at first. Gonzo sent us 49,000 messages wondering where we were…were we almost there…telling us to drive behind the hotel so we could see him riding a horse…etc…etc…etc. He was like a 5-year old: Are we there yet?…Are we there yet?…Are we there yet? Anyway, we finally made it and met Gonzo and the kids. When we asked where Grace was he told us that it was that time of the month and that she would come down to dinner when she had everything straightened out. Tj said later that he could feel my eyes boring holes in his head at that. Maybe I’m overly prudish, but I never want my husband telling another man that I’m having my period! Apparently I’ve already mentioned that to Tj. After all that, though, we had a good dinner. I was a little nervous at first, wondering how the kids would behave. We started off going into the buffet restaurant; Gonzo thought it would be more kid-friendly. We left, though, when the lady told us it was 22 euros a person (about $25!). The other restaurant had only a few couples sitting in there and I thought the kids might be a distraction, but they were angels! I can’t get over how good they are! We talked a good bit, had an enjoyable time. It was nice. Gonzo had suggested before today that he might not stay through Friday, and he told us after dinner that they would be leaving the next morning for home.

Thursday we had our appointment at the car shipping place at 10:30, but Tj wanted to be early so we got there at 10:00. I positioned myself in the waiting room with my then-current book, The Talented Mr. Ripley…the first time we came to this office I wasn’t prepared to have to sit on the sidelines, but there’s a notice on the wall that states that only one person can go into the office to have the car shipped. So I waited. It seemed like it took forever; I think it was actually about two hours. I was glad to finally see Tj walking through the waiting room giving me a thumbs up. He told me later that he had to vacuum out the trunk again and dry the car off…it was raining when we brought it, it cracked me up that they made him dry it off. He said that there were many little scratches and dings, though…I guess they just don’t want to be accused of scratching it when we go pick it up. We ran a couple of errands, shopped a little, and then hung out in the room the rest of the day…I think we rented another movie but I can’t remember what it was now.

Friday: we’d initially planned on leaving Saturday morning, but not long after we woke up Friday Tj said maybe we ought to leave then. We had a few more errands to run, but we got everything done by about 1pm. We went to the new Air Terminal fast food counter, ate and left. It was funny…as Tj was checking out I went to the bathroom. As I was walking towards the door to the women’s room a huge soldier in camouflage came out of the men’s room with a large german shepherd! I was so glad that he hadn’t come into the women’s while I was there…that would’ve scared the heck out of me!

It had rained in Murcia by the time we got home…and Tj tells me that it stormed pretty badly after I went to bed. (He stayed up half the night as is his wont.) The electricity was out when we got home…something had tripped the breaker. We’re not sure how long it’d been out, but things in the freezer were softening, and everything on the freezer door was completely thawed. I can’t wait till we move back to where that won’t be a problem.